A Letter From America

Guy has recently returned from an epic road trip across the American West. Here he saw everything from dereliction on a grand scale to great affluence and confidence. Along the way he spoke to various Americans, among them Trump supporters but more noticeably demoralised, disaffected, confused and rudderless Democrat supporters.

Recently, the Telegraph published a piece by Robert Jackman about how the US has become one of the most unwelcoming countries for tourists.

As it happens, your correspondent has just completed 4,500 miles over a five-week road trip that started in Denver in early September and continued down through western Kansas, western Oklahoma, the Texas panhandle, across southern New Mexico, eastern and northern Arizona, southwestern Utah and across that state back into Colorado. It’s one of dozens of trips I and my wife have made over the last 30 years in the United States.

The Shutdown and National Parks

At the time of writing, the shutdown has now entered its fourth week, the Senate having failed on October 20th to vote in a measure to fund the government until November 21st. Another vote is scheduled for Wednesday October 22nd.

Utah and, allegedly, Colorado have stepped in to keep their principal parks open so that tourist revenue keeps flowing. After the shutdown started during our trip we saw illegally parked cars in Bryce Canyon with ‘tow’ stickers on then, and a speeding driver pulled over by a ranger. Capitol Reef was packed with people taking advantage of free entry, but not a ranger in sight. Allegedly, the famously lethal Angels Landing hike in Zion, which involves walking along a ledge hanging off chains, and these days needs normally to be tackled on a timed ticket, is out of control because the system is not currently in operation. Mesa Verde, Colorado, is largely closed to protect archaeological sites thanks to the shutdown. However, winter is kicking in, and the impact of the shutdown is already being reduced because some locations would be closed up anyway.

BLM (Bureau of Land Management) land, which is mostly unsupervised back country, remains accessible. State parks are open as usual.

Beyond that, there is little evidence of the shutdown apart from sheets stuck to the doors of any offices to do with the US Government. Everyone we spoke to, regardless of political persuasion, regards the shutdown as being caused by pettiness, juvenile squabbling and self-serving agendas, and that it is destructive both to the country and the people impacted.

We flew out of Denver a few days ago. Passing through security was the quickest we’ve ever managed, and the flight was on time.

Ruin on the High Plains

When we crossed western Kansas and western Oklahoma, we saw dereliction on a scale we have never seen before. It’s entrenched, long-term decay and thus nothing to do with either Trump or Biden, but town after town was in a state of semi or total ruin. Abandoned gas stations and restaurants, main streets without a single functioning shop. Rusty, wrecked cars. Even a crashed goods train left to corrode in the sun by one rural highway on the edge of the Plains in Colorado. The only growth industry we saw were endless wind farms as far as the eye could see. We wondered if in 20 to 30 years’ time they will have joined the other wreckage.

This is in massive contrast to Arizona, Utah and other parts of Colorado where it seems money is pouring in to fuel vast building projects. Denver is spreading like wildfire down the I-25 corridor past Castle Rock and onto Colorado Springs. But it’s striking how there is also the appearance of a US 21st century version of British industrial towns of the 1800s. Vast estates of terraced houses, tiny by American standards, are being thrown up here and there outside some cities, like St George in Utah.

Republicans and Democrats

Throughout this entire trip, including some of the most famous sights people come from around the world to visit, we saw precisely two British people and very few Europeans or Canadians. There are some about, but only a fraction of previous years. None of the motels we stayed in, even in tourist areas, were full.

When Americans heard we’re British, plenty came up to us to thank us for still coming to the United States. Then they talk freely, probably because we’re safe – little chance of us turning out to be on the other side of the political divide. We’ve also travelled in the US so much that we often know where they come from because we’ve been there, and that helps break the ice. However, it’s a self-selecting group. We normally meet them on hikes in national or state parks, and they tend to be in their 50s and older, but by no means all. We stay studiedly neutral; it is, after all, their country and their system.

These are some of the stories:

We met a married Mormon couple (who have nine adult children and 17 grandchildren) from Salt Lake City who proudly showed us their Mini Cooper. They wanted to know if what they had heard about immigration in London was true, though they had clearly travelled internationally far more than most Americans. They are delighted with Trump, but their interest in him seemed to be limited to his clampdown on the Mexican border.

They weren’t the only people we have encountered who favour Trump, but there weren’t many who talked about him. We ran into a woman from New Jersey who was astounded when we mentioned how few foreigners we’d seen compared to previous years. She had no idea why. We explained, and she said, “Well, it was about time we had someone who puts this country first.” She never mentioned Trump by name though.

In Cortez, Colorado, we saw a house festooned with Trump posters from 2024. In the front garden was a nice new one announcing ‘TRUMP 2028’ and which was obviously a commercial product. The house was the only one we saw in 4,500 miles displaying anything overtly pro-Trump. The house stuck out because everywhere else in the town, and indeed everywhere else we went, there was nothing like it.

On a trail 12 miles west of Cortez we met a retired oil and gas worker and his wife from Green River, Wyoming, who told us they were comfortably off but not wealthy (they had arrived in a nine year-old Toyota). We walked with them for three hours. Same age as us (mid to late 60s), very physically active – unlike, they said, all their relatives. Personable and very chatty and forthcoming. An interesting instance of people in the middle. They’re not diehard Republicans but voted for Trump in 2024 because of the mounting national debt.

Now they say they are bitterly disappointed by the direction of travel and feel bewildered by it and what they called the rising corruption. They are not sure what will happen, but feel there is no valid alternative to turn to and say that all the Democrats have to offer is unrestrained socialism. They have clearly worked very hard all their lives but now see their tax money being blown on handouts to people who won’t work (rather like the UK). They told us how they have to pay $8,000 per annum for Medicaid but feel they get next to nothing for it. 

I think these were the only people we’ve met who weren’t overtly tribal. They had a reason for voting Republican last time round, rather than just out of habit, but it’s clear they believe they were misled. Nonetheless, they exhibit the problem the Democrats just haven’t resolved. In the UK, the disaffected have Reform or minor parties to turn to. This couple have no idea whom to vote for now.

At Natural Bridges National Monument, Utah, we encountered a pair of retired educated professionals who are Democrat supporters. He a professional historian, she a former teacher. They live in New Hampshire, having moved there from Florida (“which we hated”). They loath Trump but think the Democrats have totally failed to step up to the moment. The wife assured us that Trump is on the way out because she alleged that he is chronically incontinent and eats McDonalds. She added that her daughter (a nurse) is convinced he is syphilitic “because he shows all the signs”. They expressed the hope that any other would-be assassin is more successful because they are certain Trump will run for a third term otherwise. Presumably joking, but I felt they half meant it.

Near Panguitch, Utah, we met a couple of siblings from Oklahoma in their 70s travelling with spouses. They were keen to know what we make of the US at present. They wanted to tell us that they believe the transition of power at the end of Trump’s term will be violent and are greatly concerned. They added that they believe the US is too wedded to the two-party system which has prevented the election of an independent.

Closer to Zion Park in the same part of Utah we met a woman from Michigan who has a married sister living in England. This, she wonders, might be a way she could find to go and live there herself and get away from America as it is now.

We met a lady from Big Sky, Montana, at the Hovenweep National Monument in Utah. Aged in her 60s, trim, expensive hiking shoes. Realising we are British, she told us she was desperate to hike in Scotland. Why? I asked. “To get out of this country for one thing,” was the answer.

During the conversation that followed, she told us how where she has lived for decades is being wrecked by astronomical quantities of speculative and holiday-home luxury building projects by what she called “Trump supporters” flooding in from around the US to live there for a few weeks a year. Utterly convinced that Trump’s pursuit of absolute power is dangerous and reckless, her vision of 2028 is that there will be no election. Why, we asked? Because, she said, Trump will cancel it, or if there is one that by then Trump will have so tipped the scales by the destruction of the system and changed boundaries that his win will be guaranteed.

Thanks to flooding in southwest Colorado, we had to change our route and as a result went for a hike at the Dillon Pinnacles on the way to the small town of Gunnison. There we met a young woman, 30, from San Diego and working for the National Parks Service but obviously furloughed (and very fed up about it) so she was out for a hike by herself. She told us she had always been Democrat but not really thought about it. Trump’s campaign and re-election had galvanised her, she said, “and I realised I had to know my shit so I could understand all this politically”. She said she was utterly appalled by what she called Trump’s manipulation and abuse of his position “so he and any one of his friends can make a million bucks whenever”, but is equally in total despair about Biden and Harris and the general failure of the Democrats to step up. This disillusion with the Democrats is the most consistent thing we’ve picked up.

Unlike the other Democrats we spoke to, though, this young woman is less pessimistic about 2028. There is then perhaps a shocked, motivated and re-ignited youthful vote who might fill the void the Democrats have left. Whether there are enough of them remains to be seen. But as we all know, for the Left factional identity and credibility is everything and thus the tendency to fragment and be easily defeated – the reverse of the UK where in 2024 the Right was split and let Labour in with a minority share of the electorate.

The common theme among most (but not all) vocal opponents of the present administration that we met, apart from a sense of frustration, is being in possession of an apocalyptic vision for 2028. These visions vary and usually involve either violence at the next election which terrifies them, fear of the emasculation of the Supreme Court and the prospect of the Constitution being turned upside down, and the United States potentially splitting in two.

But it’s also noticeable that they are acutely conscious they have no positive alternative vision to reach for. This has been common to every Democrat sympathiser we have met: a total disillusionment with the Democratic Party’s performance and candidates. Trump’s re-election is undoubtedly in part a function of the loss of momentum and identity among the Democrats. I sensed that they see nowhere to turn, no one to turn to. They are adrift on a Sargasso Sea, enraged, cornered, bitter, resentful, betrayed and badly frightened. Only one of them mentioned Biden and Harris to us by name but some implicitly see Biden’s term as a disaster because, they say, it allowed Trump to regroup and come back on a messianic tide. Harris’s bid to become President is seen as hopeless because she was so weak a candidate.

They believe that their beloved Constitution, which relies on consent, has been exposed as impotent in the face of a force that, in their eyes, bypasses the checks and balances, overturns precedent and pursues its political enemies by silencing them, cancelling funding and seeking revenge. These sentiments are presumably what lies behind the ‘no kings’ protests that took place on October 18th in various cities.

None of the people we met mentioned any intention of participating in these events though. They mostly said they think Trump’s ability to determine the outcome of 2028 is a done deal, whatever they individually think might happen when election time comes round. They are reduced to believing they are witnesses of what they regard as a disaster in the making.

We heard not a word in the US from any of these people about peace in Gaza, even though that was all happening while were there. No-one we have met mentioned it. Nor have we seen any Palestinian or Israeli flags or even the faintest hint of anything like them. That is doubtless a function of the parts of the US we have been through.

These are just some of the vignettes of the American public I and my wife have seen in the fall of 2025. After over 30 years and 50-plus road trips out here I can’t pretend this was in the least bit scientific. It is merely reportage based on our random experiences this year.

I cannot tell you much I love the United States. The landscape is sublime beyond imagination, and it has been the greatest privilege of my adult life to come to know so much of it, especially the West, intimately. 80% of my annual driving mileage is conducted in the West. The people are friendly, articulate and welcoming. The social, political and economic history of the nation is dynamic and invigorating, though of course it includes that epic period between 1861-65 when for a moment there were two Americas.

The simple fact that the Civil War happened at all forever hangs over the US like a brooding shadow and means there are more than a few who now believe it could happen again. Could it? I have no idea, obviously, and it also couldn’t happen for the same reasons it did then. But I know that the belief or fear of division is playing a part in the tremors rumbling beneath the surface.

The Roman historian Tacitus commented once that “fate and circumstance are generally due to chance”. In other words, we have no idea what the future holds for the United States and what unexpected events may emerge to change the direction of travel without warning.

The plains, canyons, forests and mountains we have explored and driven past will look much the same in thousands of years when all the current carrying-on and all the people involved have long since turned to dust. The famous Civil War TV series (1990) created by Ken Burns includes the historian Shelby Foote explaining that the war had happened only because “we failed to do the thing we really have a genius for, which is compromise”.

Back in 1883 my great-great-grandfather, Anthony Thorold, then Bishop of Rochester, and an inveterate traveller in the US in those days, wrote this in a church magazine:

America is still being born. Her natural resources are simply infinite. The shrewdness, cheerfulness, ingenuity and vigour of her citizens are only to be equalled by their tender-heartedness and their love of home and children.

From where I’m standing, it seems that America is still in the process of being born. America’s future success and resolution of its internal differences will depend on compromise and continuing to consent to a system based on checks and balances. Thomas Jefferson’s words are worth remembering:

Though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression. Let us, then, fellow citizens unite with one heart and one mind. 

Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address 4 March 1801

That’s advice most nations, including our own, would benefit from listening to.

Guy de la Bédoyère is a historian and writer with many books to his credit. He studied US history as part of his first degree and has visited 46 of the lower 48 states in a series of extensive road trips dating back to the mid-90s. His latest book is The Confessions of Samuel Pepys. His Private Revelations (Abacus 2025).